1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method, and more particularly to the image sharpness processing apparatus and the method that combine two different image sharpening methods to enhance the quality of the image sharpness.
2. Description of the Related Art
The sharpness of digital images captured by various different optical devices such as cameras and scanners may be lowered due to different factors including a poor design of the optical devices, an erroneous digital image processing, or a shaking of the camera occurred during the process of capturing an image. Therefore, the digital images require sharpening process to enhance the sharpness of the image, wherein the conventional image sharpening method includes an unsharp masking or a fuzzy-based image sharpening method.
However, the conventional image sharpening method simply uses the unsharp masking or fuzzy-based image sharpening method only. If only the unsharp masking image sharpening method is used, discrete high-frequency signals will be generated at the edge of the object in the image, and we cannot distinguish the edge of the image from noises. Although this conventional image sharpening method can improve the sharpness of the image, yet the noise in the image is also amplified, so that the overall image quality will drop. If only the fuzzy-based image sharpening method is used, the tiny texture area in the image will be damaged, so that the content of the image tends to have the characteristics of an oil painting.